


Dirty Work

by paperclipbitch



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Coffee, F/F, Femslash, Flirting, Mild Injuries, Shapeshifting, Vignette, they never met in canon but they should've been banging lbr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 03:09:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6356545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You do realise we’re the bad guys, right?” </p>
<p>Coffee breaks at Primatech.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dirty Work

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted on LJ March 2008] For this to work, let's all pretend Eden didn't die, huh? Stupid show, killing off all the characters I liked.

The coffee machine in what could laughably be called a break room is broken again. Probably in some form of futile protest, it’s only dispensing plain black coffee, lukewarm and with an edge of a bitter taste that might even be rust. 

Candice makes a face at her paper cup. She’s tipped three packets of sugar into the stuff and it is still undrinkable.

“This is bullshit,” she says, with feeling.

Eden, sitting on a semi-collapsed sofa in the corner, makes a very soft, sighing sound, but doesn’t look up from the music magazine she’s half-heartedly flicking through.

“You know it is,” Candice continues, putting the disgusting drink down on a table and turning towards Eden. “In any other society, people who could do what we can do would be treated like Gods. We’re practically superheroes, for Christ’s sake, we should be zooming around the world with our own adoring masses and all that crap.”

Eden turns a page and doesn’t look up, but her mouth twitches in a smirk.

“I’m guessing you never read comic books as a kid.”

Candice shrugs. “Neither did you,” she points out.

“The superheroes always have to hide from the world,” Eden elaborates. “Because they’re feared and hated.”

Candice is about to ask where Eden gained all this geeky knowledge from, when she remembers that the woman has been hanging out with a comic book artist recently. Isaac Mendez. Pretty, in an unhealthily emaciated sort of way, and tortured in the self-absorbed fashion long-term junkies always are. Yadda yadda yadda. Eden always came away from meeting with him looking guilty, with red paint on her fingertips. 

“We could make a _fortune_ ,” Candice tells her, ignoring the whole _feared and hated_ topic because it’s not something she cares to remember. “We’ve got superpowers, we should be going around doing what the hell we like, not sitting here like obedient little lapdogs.”

Eden’s heard this before, though she does look up. Her eyes are twinkling in a way that shouldn’t be distracting but unfortunately kind of is. “We both tried that, and look where it got us.”

“Stuck in a room with crappy air-conditioning and even crappier coffee,” Candice agrees. 

“If you’re that pissed, call maintenance,” Eden suggests, chucking her magazine onto the chair opposite her and stretching out a little. 

“Maintenance hate us,” Candice replies, kicking off her shoes and resting her feet on the coffee table. “Or they’re scared of us, which is kind of the same thing.” She sighs, and this is one of those days when she’s going to be goddamn _angry_ about _everything_ and there’s nothing she can do about it. “You know, Bennet and Thompson and everyone probably get their coffee imported straight from Milan and get it here while it’s still fucking _hot_.”

Eden is patiently watching her with those ridiculously big eyes. “You done?” she asks after a moment.

Candice shrugs. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“Then just cheer up,” Eden tells her. “It’s not like it’s anything new.”

Candice scowls at her.

“I could _order_ you to be cheerful,” Eden adds brightly. “Have you walking around all day with a humiliatingly big grin. How would you like that?”

“You do that, and I’ll show you some really kinky shit involving you and Thompson.” 

Eden laughs.

“This is exactly why the world would hate and fear us,” she points out. “We’d never cut it as part of some crack superhero team.”

“I don’t know, I think I’d look cute in lycra,” Candice murmurs.

“That’s because you can make people see whatever you want them to see,” Eden tells her. “The rest of us aren’t so lucky.”

Candice cocks her head thoughtfully, and feels a smile that’s just a shade too predatory curve her mouth. “Oh, I think you could carry it off.”

“On a frozen day in hell, maybe,” Eden says, but she’s blushing anyway.

~

This morning, Bennet called her in to help out with a particularly tetchy guy with telekinesis, who is currently locked up somewhere in their secret basement with needles sticking out of his head.

Candice has two broken ribs and some nasty bruising, so she’s finding it impossible to sympathise. It’s too damn hot in here and while she’s using a nice little surface illusion to hide her swollen and purple face, it doesn’t stop it from _hurting_ like fuck. She closes her eyes and tilts her head against the back of the couch with a soft groan. What they _really_ need to do is track someone down with healing powers; the next few weeks are going to be a complete bitch.

The door opens and Candice grits her teeth. Alone, she can be temporarily vulnerable and relaxed. If someone else is around, she’s going to have to sit upright and be obnoxious and awake and all that stuff.

“Do you mind?” she hisses. “I’m trying to have a migraine in here.”

“I’ll be quiet,” Eden offers, in that soft voice that always sounds like it’s going to drift off and do far more interesting things if she’s not careful.

It’s kind of possible that Candice has taken one too many codeine pills.

She makes a soft huffing sort of noise, but if it’s only Eden she can at least remain sprawled on the uncomfortable couch without any loss of face.

“I brought you a coffee,” Eden adds. “Good stuff, I went out to get it.”

With effort, Candice gets her eyes open.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“Bennet said you got beaten up pretty bad,” Eden offers, something that’s not quite concern dancing around the edges of her voice.

“I’m fine,” Candice replies, ruining her words by the fact they’re almost spat out through gritted teeth. She reaches for the paper cup Eden is holding out, popping off the plastic top and finding, with only a small sense of surprise, that the other woman has somehow managed to get her a coffee exactly the way she likes it. She doesn’t remember them ever having a conversation about coffee – other than the usual _this machine coffee tastes like fermented paperclips and I can’t believe that I’m willingly drinking it, there’s got to be an easier way to get caffeine into my system_ type discussions that all of them have – but nonetheless Eden has gotten her one with cream and no sugar.

Eden sits down opposite her, sipping at her own drink. They all drink too much coffee and eat too much junk food and don’t sleep enough, and Candice is the only one getting away with it because she can make people see exactly what she wants them to see. Eden looks semi-dead on her feet, pixie features withdrawn and pale.

“Want to talk about it?” she asks softly, after a moment. Every time Candice thinks that Eden’s equally as bitter and sharp as she is, she’s shocked out of it. Eden hasn’t been doing this as long as Candice has, and there’s still that raw nerve of vulnerability left in her. Bennet should’ve finished bashing that out of her in a couple of months’ time.

Candice laughs quietly. “No.” She takes another mouthful of coffee. “There are psychiatrists here, you know.”

Eden shrugs. “They’ll only write you off as crazy.”

“Maybe I am.” Candice pinches the bridge of her nose, and instantly regrets it. She doesn’t think it’s _actually_ broken, but it damn well feels like it is.

“How messed up are you?” Eden asks, resting her chin on her hands. Everything about her is so compact and tidy that some days Candice isn’t sure she’s real. And, okay, maybe she’s a little out of it. She’s on some reasonably strong painkillers, after all.

“Pretty messed up,” she replies. Eden frowns, and Candice obediently drops the illusion for a second, revealing the rich purple bruising covering her face and arms. 

“Shit,” Eden says with feeling. Candice smoothes herself over, sliding the flawless copy of herself back over again.

“It’s okay,” she says. “The guy’s shut up downstairs and the scientists are amusing themselves with needles, so I guess it’ll work out worse for him in the long run.”

Eden smiles, but there’s something else going on there. After a moment, Candice sighs.

“Spit it out.”

Eden gives her this funny little smirk, half-amused, half-worried. “You do realise we’re the bad guys, right?”

Candice shrugs. “We always were, remember?” She’d rather _not_ recall what she was doing before Bennet caught her arm and informed her she was coming to work for him no matter how many brain-frying illusions she chucked in his direction, but it wasn’t exactly legal and it wasn’t exactly kind to a lot of people. “At least this way we’re the bad guys with a regular pay check and our very own break room. It lends it some kind of respectability.”

Eden laughs. “I guess so.” She thinks about this. “So, good girls go to Heaven, and bad girls wind up in Texas working for paper companies that don’t actually sell paper.”

“They didn’t tell you that in Sunday School, huh?”

Eden raises an eyebrow. “ _You_ went to Sunday School?”

Candice gives her a smirk in return. “Wouldn’t you like to know…”

“I have no idea who you really are,” Eden says lightly, like it doesn’t really matter.

“I don’t know who you are either,” points out Candice. “I _do_ know there’s no such person as ‘Eden McCain’.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be who I was,” Eden murmurs, arms folded defensively across her chest.

“Maybe I don’t either.” This is getting too deep for Candice, to a level of conversation she isn’t willing to have, not ever. “We could swap anyway.” Her grin widens. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

Eden shrugs. “But you won’t. You’ll just show me what you think I want to see, or whatever past you’re creating for yourself this month.”

“I might not.”

Eden bites her lip before she says: “I could _order_ you to show me what you really look like.” She sounds like she’d rather not be saying it, but she does anyway.

“Will you?” Candice asks.

Eden holds her gaze for a very long moment. “No.”

Candice very nearly laughs. Instead, she says: “Thanks for the coffee.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Silence falls as Eden gets up to put her paper cup in the trash, and Candice wonders if maybe she gave away more than she meant to.

~

“Bennet is going to hurt you,” Eden remarks lightly when she walks into the break room on a frustratingly slow afternoon.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Candice replies. Her lap is full of paper and notes and files. While she generally despises paperwork, Thompson started threatening to start breaking fingers and while there are few things Candice will tolerate or even respect in the world, she has no doubt that Thompson will keep his word.

“It’s kind of hard for you to play dumb,” Eden says. “You should get points for trying, though.”

Candice coughs, and pushes her horn-rimmed glasses further up her nose.

“What Bennet doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” she says. The gravely voice coming out of her mouth disconcerts her slightly, but she’s not going to admit it, not to anyone.

“He’ll set the Haitian on you,” Eden warns, in the gleeful tone of a child threatening some kind of bogeyman. “He looks like the kind of guy who could snap you into pieces without much trouble.”

“Or I’ll just wake up with a head full of static,” Candice replies, “and really, I’ve had worse offers.”

“They might just kill you,” Eden suggests, waking up the coffee machine, which makes angry grinding sounds which imply that at any second it could implode. “Standard execution. I’m sure you’re breaking all kinds of rules.”

“When you’ve finished prophesising my agonising death,” Candice begins, in a really _good_ impression of _that_ voice at a particularly trying moment, “some of us have work to do.”

Eden turns around, and starts laughing. “I’m sorry,” she says, “But I really can’t take you seriously today. It’s too disconcerting. Can’t you just… switch off for a few minutes?”

“No,” Candice replies, voice crisp and clean and authoritative. She kind of likes this, actually, she might have to do it more often. “I’ll lose the bet if I do.”

“Just tell Jimmy that you kept it up all day,” Eden suggests, collecting her paper cup of coffee and walking over. “He’s not going to know any different.”

“Jimmy’s a walking lie-detector,” Candice reminds her, “of course he’s going to know.”

There is a distinct possibility that what she’s doing could get her a Company equivalent of a slapped wrist, which is probably a severed hand or something else equally melodramatic and cruel, but it’s too hot today and there’s nothing happening in the world of People With Freaky Destructive Abilities, so she might as well have taken Jimmy up on his bet. Jimmy’s not allowed outside, anyway, he’s been downstairs and locked up for at least as long as Candice has been working for the Company. If taking part in a stupid wager will give the poor guy some kind of amusement, then she might as well go for it.

Not that she’s getting _soft_ or anything.

“Do you think they have security cameras installed in here?” Eden asks with mild interest, pushing some of Candice’s paperwork out of the way as she sits down beside her.

“Probably,” Candice agrees. “Since we’re so damn dangerous and weird and not to be trusted.”

“And then they kill us when we’re no longer useful,” Eden continues, voice bright, like it’s not something they don’t all stay awake some nights worrying about. 

“I’m still useful,” Candice reminds her.

“And Bennet is still going to get the Haitian to hurt you,” Eden tells her with a smile. “Because wandering around all day looking like him is causing mass confusion and is going to get you into all kinds of trouble.”

Candice clears her throat. “There’s no need to sound so damn cheerful about it.”

Eden shrugs. “It’s a slow day for me too.”

She turns her head to look at Candice, mouth curving into a smirk.

“What?” Candice snaps out eventually, and that somehow sounds more like her. 

“It’s just…” Eden laughs slightly. “It’s weird. It’s _really_ weird,” she adds fervently. 

“It’s not exactly a picnic from this side,” Candice tells her. The tie is practically choking her, and the glasses keep slipping down her nose. 

Eden is giggling now, turning away with a hand over her eyes. “I can’t look at you, it’s just too strange.”

“You can make people do _whatever_ you want them to do just by telling them to, and yet _this_ is too freaky for you?” Candice asks incredulously. 

“Bennet never comes in here,” Eden explains. “It’s like a very small sign the world’s ending or something.”

“The world _is_ ending,” Candice reminds her, “at least according to your little junkie friend.”

“Isaac can see the future,” Eden says lightly. “If anyone’s gonna know, it’s him.”

“Darn,” Candice murmurs dryly, “the world’s ending and I still have so much left to do.”

“Like?” Eden asks, never one to pass up on an opportunity to try and learn something about her co-workers. Candice is going to have to talk to her about that sometime. Mystery is really _all_ they have left to them; though maybe Eden knows that, she certainly plays her cards close to her chest.

Candice raises a significant eyebrow at Eden. The other woman stares at her, and then gets up.

“Shit,” she says, laughing a little, “when you look like Bennet, that’s fucking _terrifying_.”

Candice laughs, and yeah, it does feel kind of strange to hear Bennet’s dry chuckle roll out of her mouth. Not that she will tell Eden. Not _ever_.

“I’m not talking to you until you look like yourself again,” Eden informs her. 

“You have no idea what I really look like,” Candice reminds her, turning her attention back to the paperwork in her lap. Red tape was never her strong point.

“At this point, I’ll take anything that isn’t Bennet,” Eden tells her. Thinks about it. “And not Thompson, that might even be worse.”

“You really are _way_ too easily traumatised,” Candice remarks. 

Eden laughs, and the door closes behind her.

~

The uncomfortable silence yawns and stretches between them. Candice adds cream and sugar that she doesn’t really want to her coffee, and doesn’t drink it. She _hates_ awkward, and she hates the way Eden is sitting, all hunched up and quiet, refusing to make eye contact. 

Things are splintered at the moment. It’s a thing The Company has going on.

“I’m leaving,” Candice informs her. 

Eden doesn’t look up, and Candice doesn’t want to push, but ends up doing it anyway.

“Did you hear me?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Eden replies.

Candice watches Eden for another moment.

“You’re pissed,” she says, almost surprised. “Jesus, honey, you’re in the wrong line of work to save the world. Best you can hope for is a slice of the power when it changes hands.”

Eden scowls, mouth tight. She never _was_ very good at being amoral, Candice has always said so.

“We don’t owe these people _anything_ ,” Candice insists, her voice is too savage and sharp with the strain of something that isn’t guilt but sort of stings like it. “We’re circus freaks to them, and we’re useful until we’re not and then we’re executed. Simple as that.”

“It’s not simple,” Eden mutters, voice flat.

“Yeah, it is,” Candice insists. “Or are you just all pissy ‘cause it’s my fault Bennet’s all locked up downstairs? The guy didn’t give a _shit_ about you, Eden, he just needed you when it suited him.”

Eden says nothing. Candice likes to think she scored that particular point, which is nice ‘cause she’s not going to win many more.

“You said it yourself,” Candice pushes, “we’re the bad guys.”

Eden merely glares. Obviously, she thinks that there’s a fine line between being _the bad guys_ and merely selling out.

“The Company is crumbling,” Candice tells her. “You know that. Get out while you still damn well can.”

“Have you got a better offer?” Eden demands.

“Better than kidnapping people like me and then leaving them to be tortured? I don’t know, but Linderman wants my help, and I’m going to damn well go for it.”

“And you think Linderman is going to fix things?” Eden demands. “Or will you just help him until suddenly one day you decide that loyalty isn’t worth anything any more, and move on again?”

“How else are we supposed to survive?” Candice is shouting, and she shouldn’t be, because this conversation doesn’t matter, Eden’s emotions don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. “We can’t live like normal people, Eden, because we’re _not like them_.”

Eden folds her arms across her chest, tight. Candice wants to tell her that she doesn’t owe _he_ r anything either, they’re definitely not friends and they’re barely colleagues, acquaintances simply for convenience. They talk because there’s no one else to talk to and sometimes Candice pushes too far ‘cause she knows Eden can take it. That’s all, and she has no right to be so angry. The world could actually fucking _end_ in a few days, anger isn’t going to help either of them.

“I should go,” Candice murmurs bitterly, abandoning her coffee mug and getting to her feet. “If you’ve got any sense, you will too.”

Eden swallows, and stands up too.

“I’m not going to miss you,” she practically hisses. 

That’s okay, Candice won’t miss her either, though that doesn’t explain why she’s not moving, why she’s still staring at Eden. There’s no space for compromises, no space for slowing down, you can’t _do_ that and survive. Candice knows that and she also thinks that, in spite of everything, Eden does too. They’ve done things that no one should do, sold their souls in the hope of breathing for another five minutes.

Eden doesn’t look angry any more, and she doesn’t look hurt either, and nothing is safe these days.

“Goodbye,” she murmurs, and before Candice registers what’s really going on, Eden _moves_. One hand slipping into Candice’s hair to pull her head down, into a farewell kiss that neither of them are exactly ready for. Candice opens her mouth anyway, and Eden isn’t nearly as soft and weak as her exterior sometimes implies. She’s warm and angry and maybe they should have got this out of the way a long time ago; it’s too late now.

Candice tries to keep herself calm by telling herself that really, this isn’t about her at _all_ ; but then there’s the horrible possibility that it _is_.

The door closes too loudly behind her, and for a strange moment she thinks she’ll turn back. But there’s nothing that can be gained from emotional attachment, so she doesn’t.


End file.
